Competitive play is fun...as long as the sandbaggers pound sand.
Is competitive play really fun? because all i hear about seems to be mostly problems
I don’t play handicap events or tournaments that take more than 4.5 hours. Both take the fun out of golf. I just started playing in an over 50 city league last week and really enjoyed it. The worst golfer in my group was a 3 index. I’ll be playing in that league 7 of the next 9 Thursdays. It’s fun to feel a little nervous on the course after an absence of that with really not playing any competitive golf outside of club tournaments the last 25 years. I was happy how my nerves held up last week shooting a 75 with a triple on the back nine.
I enjoy competitive play, but I don't like league play. I don't like the politics of league stuff. I enjoy friendly match play best.
Straight up competition, based on fair/equal competition, is amazing. Like no better feeling like that rush of excitement on the first tee of a competition. Or when the match is on the line and you pull through. Even when you are shaking hands at the end of the day, and you won or lost.... but the competition was fierce.
It all seems to fall apart with sandbagging, stupid handicapping, and cheating.
It all seems to fall apart with sandbagging, stupid handicapping, and cheating.
Not so fine when you're playing a +3 or a +5 mini-tour player.
I had 3 birds and an eagle against him, played extremely well for me overall, and lost handily. On an off day for him.
But in skins, we have plenty of 10 or so handicap players who compete and win. One had 4 birds last week and cashed out on 2. He also had a few blowup holes. If it were stroke play, despite his birds, he'd have finished around his handicap.
But yeah, I sure get the frustration with handicap events when there's no other reasonable recourse. I avoided them at every level of my play, still do.
I agree with Rock's assessment, the 'problems' just appear to be a bigger deal than they really are. There are many who really enjoy the competition but that's usually not thread starting material.
There are few things in life that I enjoy more than competitive golf!
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2010
- Messages
- 19,618
- Reaction score
- 4,086
- Location
- Liberty Lake, Washington
- Handicap
- GHIN 7.1
I love competitive golf. It really gets the juices flowing and I like the adrenaline rush.
Every event that I have played that were sanctioned, i.e. ran by a State golf association, have been incredibly positive. I did play for an amateur "tour" for a while but once they introduced live scoring, people began sandbagging because they knew exactly what the other players were shooting. If they were up by a ton of strokes, they'd start dropping strokes to try and only win by 1 or 2 strokes or if they were way out of contention, they'd start taking the max score because the tour only counts tour scores towards the handicap.
This example is why the best way is to run flights (0-5 5-10 10+), and reward low gross & low net simultaneously. But you can only prize in one or the other.
This is how my league works and I look forward to it every week. I've also played in some more formal member/guest type events and they've always been reasonable. When I play in captain's choice or whatever type of invitational tournament/event I go in with the assumption that there will be cheating and sandbagging so I don't have to worry about it & can have fun. Mostly I just do those for charity anyways so I'm really just there to enjoy it.